There are two interesting stories today related to the new Disney movie Earth, and since I’ve seen the little kid-friendly doc and disagree with both sides of the backlash, I’m going to address the stories in today’s bloggery despite the fact that only a few film blogs have commented on this topic. First off, there’s the complaint from Newsweek’s Jesse Ellison who thinks the film is too violent to be rated G, to which I call b.s. If anything, the movie cops out too much when it comes to the food-chain kills that every kid is aware of. Bambi is more violent than Earth, and I do honestly believe Ellison made up, or at least exaggerated, his observation of a little girl jumping into her father’s lap. There were kids at the press screening I attended too, but they were so visibly bored with the tameness of the movie that they were literally running up and down the aisle of the Disney screening room.
As for the other story, apparently all of the footage in Earth is recycled from BBC’s Planet Earth series and basically only the James Earl Jones narration is fresh. Well, sure, maybe this is true, and maybe it’s a bit of a scam, but if so it’s at least a decent abridged and censored version with which to introduce kids to that series (since I’ve only seen bits of the series, I guess it was an introduction for me, as well).
So, I guess your decision to see the movie now rests on three things: you’re okay with a little implicit nature violence, you’re okay with an excellent nature series being retooled for your kids and shown on the big screen (where Planet Earth was not made available), and you want Disneynature to plant a tree in your honor, as promised by the studio’s genius promotion.
After the jump, some responses from the blogs, plus some bonus bloggery related to Earth Day:
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Through one of the smartest film promotions I’ve seen in awhile, Disney has already sold 500,000 advance tickets to its little nature doc-for-kids, Earth, by promising to plant a tree for each audience member who pays to see the film during its first week (starting tomorrow and ending Tuesday, April 28). Never mind that all those people could just plant a tree themselves, and that families may ultimately be disappointed to find the movie is less focused than the ads would have them believe (the “three animal families” narrative is often abandoned for a broader look at the planet’s ecosystems) –– the fact that Disney managed to come up with such a successful marketing gimmick, and incentive, that has no necessary web-related elements is extremely commendable in these mostly viral-campaign-obsessed times.
Of course, there’s nothing at all wrong with online movie marketing, and it’s worth pointing to another new film opening this week, Obsessed, which has a fun little gimmick utilizing personalizing technology we’ve seen in plenty of prior viral promotional tools. It may not help save the planet, but we actually had more fun making this video, in which we made Ali Larter seem to be obsessed with SpoutBlog editor Karina Longworth, than we did watching Disney’s Earth. Then again, we at least saw the documentary, primarily because of its promotion, yet we probably won’t be seeing the very banal-looking Obsessed.
Ignoring whether or not they were successful, we picked ten other favorite viral gimmicks, many of which were more enjoyable than the movies they promoted:
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